French apartment renovations, Day 305: Regrets and falls

13,334 steps

I'm having a moment of regret...I think the floors are too dark with this finish. And it's too late to change. Argh. I mean--it's still beautiful wood but I look at it and just feel a huge sense of disappointment.

All these months of work, and now the most visible feature of the apartment isn't right.

Okay, moment over.

Also I fell off the mezzanine. That was fun. Here's how it happened:

I went in today to check up on the floors and see if they were ready for the next coat of oil. I got up on our wood ladder (as I've done hundreds of times), leaned it at exactly the same angle as we've always used, and started inspecting the mezzanine floor and rubbing parts to see if the oil was totally absorbed. I was standing on the ladder because I didn't want to walk on the mezzanine floors.

About a minute into doing this, the ladder slipped out from under me with a bang. I somehow hung onto the edge of the mezzanine for about a half-second, then fell off.

I was graced with luck, or something, because I missed hitting the ladder on the floor beneath me and made a beautiful landing on both feet. Nothing broken, nothing sprained, nothing sore.

The ladder made two horrible scrape marks on the floor. I managed to rub them out with a bit of white spirit (the solvent for the floor oil). The floors must be way more slippery than I imagined becuase this ladder even has rubber caps on the bottom!

So no more using the simple ladder--back to the more stable folding stepladder.

Today was relaxing, besides the falling off the mezzanine part. I sewed Halloween costumes, went to the fabric store with Inga to find some buttons, ran errands, and even had a few minutes to read a book.